❚ HERE’S A PICTURE MANY SAID would never be taken: all four members of 80s supergroup Culture Club reunited. And a live concert imminent. In 1983 the New Romantic band with its gender-bending singer and unique reggae-based rhythms were prominent among the 18 new-wave bands who mounted the Second British Invasion of the US charts. In 1984 the band won the Grammy Award as Best New Artist and along with Princess Diana, Boy George became an international fashion emblem for the new Swinging London.

This week Boy George’s official website announces that the four original members of Culture Club have reunited for the first time since 2002 for a one-off concert in Australia on Jan 1. Before an audience of 30,000 at Sydney’s Glebe Island, overlooking the harbour, the band will play after the New Year’s Eve midnight fireworks on a bill with The Pet Shop Boys, Jamiroquai and other Australian acts.

More surprising is that the photo shows Roy, Jon, George and Mikey in a London recording studio where George said “we’re in the middle of writing for a new album” with their original producer Steve Levine. This first pic of the reunited Culture Club is grabbed from Sydney’s Seven Television in an interview on Tuesday when George said they’d include a couple of new songs in the “hit-packed” Sydney show. When Jon was asked why a reunion has taken so long, an agonisingly long silence followed until he managed to answer “I don’t know!” This did raise the laugh we see above, then he added “I think we have a ten-year cycle. It takes that long to recover from the last time we worked with each other.” Not a flicker of a smile from anyone. The six-minute exchange contained so many sidelong glances between the four and generally awkward body language that you might wonder whether they would survive the flight to Australia together.

Culture Club’s initial five-year career was blown apart after clocking ten Top 40 hits in the US, which included Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. By 1986, however, George’s addiction to drugs was making tabloid headlines and his secret four-year romance with Jon was growing ever more explosive. A sanitised TV dramatisation titled Worried About The Boy provided an extremely one-sided version of events when aired last year. From 1998 a band reunion over four years yielded two chart hits and a platinum compilation album in the UK.

✱ Get up close and personal with Prince’s life and work at the limited 21-day retrospective My Name Is Prince at the O2 Arena in London for 21 days from 27 October. Tickets are £25 and go on sale Friday 25 Aug at 9am

SEARCH our 700 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX

NEWS — OLD FACES, NEW MIXES FOR THE 20-TEENS

✱ Catch up with Spandau Ballet’s relaunch at Facebook Live – In September Gary, Steve, Martin and John hosted a screening of the new Through The Barricades documentary then gave a 40-minute interview about their plans . . .Also – Over at SonyLegacyUK they’re collecting stories from Spandau Ballet fans about how the band’s music has soundtracked your life. Email your stories to legacylovestories@gmail.com and the best will be used in their next Love Stories feature. More info here

………………………………………………………………

✱ Former Animal Nightlife singer and face about town Andy Polaris relived his London life with Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London in August, then on the iPlayer

………………………………………………………………

✱ FINALLY! What ought to prove the definitive appreciation of the style bible that shaped the 1980s. . . Cultural guru Paul Gorman tells The Story of The Face from the magazine’s launch with £3,500 of Nick Logan’s savings in 1980 to its sale to Emap in 1999, in between “paving the way for the digital delivery of visual culture in the 21st century”. – From Thames & Hudson this November

………………………………………………………………

✱ Pop Stars in My Pantry is showbiz hack Paul Simper’s memoir of the early days of one of pop’s most successful eras: the 1980s. It’s an account of how a wide-eyed lad landed in London just as the capital’s club scene went into orbit. Available from Amazon, from August 2017… Read an extract here at Shapersofthe80s – Sade’s first foray to New York City

………………………………………………………………

✱ Ex-Spandau singer Tony Hadley and his band headline the Lost 80s Live tour through Sept 2017… Returning to Blackburn 29 Sept, Chile 4 Nov, later to top the bill at Wembley’s SSE Arena for the Let’s Rock Christmas Retro Show also starring Kim Wilde, Nik Kershaw, Go West, Nick Heyward, T’Pau and others tbc

………………………………………………………………

✱ Join in the Q&A during An Audience with Martin Kemp who is touring the UK all year: remaining dates include Milton Keynes, Richmond (Yorks), London and Crawley

………………………………………………………………

✱ Steve Norman Live & Personal will be an intimate encounter including an acoustic performance and a Q&A: two dates at London’s newest Pizza Express Live venue are already sold out. But a third is still booking for Birmingham on 25 November. . . Later Steve shares the stage when Bowie pianist Mike Garson and his band perform Aladdin Sane in its entirety plus a set of Bowie favourites on 28 & 29 November in London and Sheffield

………………………………………………………………

✱ The original Blitz Club deejay’s first solo album capturing the spirit of 80s electronica, Rusty Egan Presents Welcome to the Dancefloor, was published last year – read a full review of its 14 tracks here at Shapers of the 80s. . . Hear WTTDF via the Mixcloud player. . . Egan also booked for all three Rewinds in July and August. . . Come and listen to Egan telling “the truth” about his colourful past on 6 Dec in An Audience With Rusty at London’s new Pizza Express Live venue

………………………………………………………………

✱ Matt Bianco’s Mark Reilly and the 8-piece New Cool Collective celebrate their collaboration album The Things You Love with a European tour through the summer – Facebook has Mark’s dates). Bianco’s 1984 album Whose Side Are You On? introduced jazz to a chart scene still dominated by British new wave, ska and punk. Hit singles followed

………………………………………………………………

✱ Issue 71 of Soul Survivors magazine features George Benson, Larry Mizell, Bez Parkes, Jan Kincaid, Simon Law and all soul music events. Under Fitzroy Facey, the mag celebrated its tenth anniversary with a new compilation on Expansion Records (above).

WE RESPECT COPYRIGHT

We respect copyright, and are happy to give credit to a photographer’s work and try to seek permission first. If you own images published here and wish them to be removed, simply ask.
Reblogging is theft, so whenever you recycle any picture for your own use, please credit the photographer or artist (living or dead), and seek permission to reproduce it. Their livelihoods (and those of their families) often depend on fair dealing